COLUMBUS – The Ohio High School Athletic Association will honor five Ohio greats during the finals of the 2026 Boys State Basketball Tournament Saturday, March 21, as part of its Circle of Champions recognition program. Among those being saluted are Pro Football Hall of Famer Orlando Pace, originally from Sandusky, as well as current and former football standouts Paris Johnson Jr. (Cincinnati) and Brady Quinn (Dublin); former Ohio State basketball All-American Frani Washington (Toledo), and current collegiate football official and former basketball official Dr. Dennis (Denny) Morris (Elida).

Pace was a basketball and football standout at Sandusky High School before beginning an accomplished football career as an offensive tackle at Ohio State, where he was a two-time unanimous All-American, a two-time winner of the Lombardi Award, won the Outland Trophy and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting. He was named the 1996 Big Ten Player of the Year. The No. 1 pick in the 1997 NFL Draft, Pace played 13 years in the NFL with the Rams and Bears. He was a seven-time Pro Bowl and five-time all-Pro selection and helped the Rams win the Super Bowl after the 1999 season and make another appearance two years later. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.

Johnson Jr. is a Cincinnati native who graduated from Princeton High School in 2019 and was twice named a first team all-Ohio offensive tackle. He attended Ohio State, where he started as a freshman in the National Championship Game against Alabama in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, and then started every game as a sophomore and junior and was named All-Big Ten and was a unanimous All-American as a left tackle as a junior. Selected sixth in the first round of the NFL draft by Arizona in 2023, Johnson has started 43 games with the Cardinals, the last two years at left tackle.

Quinn graduated from Dublin Coffman High School, throwing for over 4,300 yards and 46 touchdowns his last two years at quarterback and helping the Shamrocks win the 2021 state baseball championship. He went on to star at quarterback for Notre Dame, where he started for four years; was an All-American as a junior and senior, and won the Sammy Baugh Trophy, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and the Maxwell Award during his career. He also finished in the top four in Heisman Trophy voting twice. A first-round draft pick of the Browns in 2007, he spent parts of seven seasons in the NFL with six different teams. Since 2019, Quinn has served as a college football analyst for Big Noon Kickoff on Fox, and he does additional work analyzing or discussing both college football and the NFL for Fox and other networks.

Washington was a pioneer in girls sports in the 1970s. A three-sport star at Toledo Woodward High School, she was first team All-Ohio in basketball as a senior and was named the Toledo City League Player-of-the-Year. As a junior, Washington competed in the first OHSAA girls state track & field tournament and was on state championship and state runner-up relay teams, and she led the Polar Bears to the first-ever OHSAA big-school girls state basketball championship in 1976. Washington went on to play basketball at Ohio State and helped the Buckeyes win the Big Ten championship in 1978 and became the school’s first All-American in women’s basketball a year later. She resides in her hometown of Toledo.

Morris is a distinguished football and basketball official. In basketball, he has served as an OHSAA Basketball Rules Interpreter since 2005 and has been the Association’s Director of Officiating Development for Basketball since 2010. During his career, he has officiated the OHSAA state boys basketball finals three times. In football, Morris officiated at the high school level for more than four decades, moved to the Mid-American Conference in 1997 and has been a back judge in the Big Ten Conference since 2002. He has officiated 24 post-season bowl games. A graduate from Elida High School, Bowling Green State and the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine, Dr. Morris retired three years ago as the chief medical officer and vice president of medical affairs for the Lima Memorial Health System.

Other awards will be presented during various times at this year’s boys state tournament. The honorees are as follows:

• The 2026 OHSAA Coaches Sportsmanship, Ethics and Integrity Awards for boys basketball will go to Terry Rowe, head coach for the past 10 years at Sugarcreek Garaway High School, located in Eastern Ohio in Tuscarawas County, who has been coaching for 26 years overall.

• Three 2026 inductees into the Ohio Prep Sports Media Association Hall of Fame will be recognized, Denny McPherson, Dan Messerschmidt and Tom Puskar. McPherson has been involved with high school and youth sports in Marion County for 46 years while also becoming one of the state’s leading bowling writers along the way. He spent 36 years as a sportswriter for the Marion Star before retiring in 2015. Messerschmidt covered sports for the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum for 30 years before transitioning in 2017 to the North Central Ohio Media group (Saga Communications), which encompasses WQEL and WBCO radio stations and Crawford County Now online, where, as the sports director, he is mostly responsible for online content and scheduling. Puskar is an award-winning photojournalist with nearly 40 years of experience. He spent 33 years at the Ashland Times-Gazette, including 26 years as chief photographer, before spearheading the technological transition from film to digital photography for both the Ashland Times-Gazette and all of Dix Communications newspapers. He currently is a freelancer for the Mansfield News Journal.